


In the midst of the innumerable stars

by Beleriandings



Series: In the midst of the innumerable stars [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, SCIFI AU, Space AU, ÑOLDOR IN SPAAAAAAACE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 13:29:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2734337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the light of the binary stars at the heart of the Valinor system suddenly and mysteriously disappears, Maedhros and his brothers hurry back to their family's old ship Formenos, outside the asteroid belt... only to find out something terrible has happened while they were away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the midst of the innumerable stars

Nothing looked out of the ordinary to Maitimo’s eyes – apart from the lack of reflected light from the distant Valinor binary system glancing off the bulky, stalwart old tub  _Formenos_ ’ heat shielding - when he first sighted the ship coming into view before them, and yet somehow he  _knew_  something was wrong. The emergency lights were on, but that was to be expected, given a sudden power drop. He frowned, trying to get a read on the ship.

“Come in  _Formenos_. This is Nelyafinwë Fëanorion, asking for docking clearance for seven rangers. My brothers and I are back, is all.” He stopped talking, realising he had not heard the soft electronic sound that meant the com had connected with the ship. He frowned, jamming his finger against the button.  _Com malfunction. Typical._  He rolled his eyes, trying the other line. To his surprise, it connected easily.

“Curvo?” he said into the com, peering out at the bright dot that he knew to be  _one_  of his brother’s rangers at least, still flying in untidy formation. “You seeing the  _Formenos_  up ahead? Signals all looking good?” he scowled at the offending com. “Because I can’t seem to connect with this damn thing.”

The line crackled, and his brother hesitated for a moment. “I… Nelyo, there’s something off about - ”

His words were cut off as several things happened at once. First, a globe of fire ballooned out, harsh against the velvet, star-strewn blackness of space. Maitimo cried out aloud, the sound too loud in the tiny, claustrophobic ranger capsule. He had always hated flying these outdated things the  _Formenos_  had, though the battered old ship had a certain place in his heart.

His first instinct was to try to sit up, but he was pushed back by the belts that held him in place, almost reclining. He blinked, momentarily blinded as the light of the flames flashed along the hull of the  _Formenos_ , growing closer up ahead. He blinked, hardly believing what he was seeing. The  _Formenos_  was careening off course after the explosion, and there was a gaping  _hole_  in its side, he realised in horror, gushing black smoke.  _But no, there was something else…_  something  _dark_ , darker than the smoke shooting out of the hole in the side of the ship. A craft of some sort, but not like any Maitimo had ever seen before. It made him feel sick to look at it, without knowing why.

Suddenly his com crackled into life. Maglor’s voice sounded too loud, harsh. “Nelyo! Did you see - ”

“Yes” he said grimly. “Káno, we’ve got a problem.”

“I’ll say. Granddad was in there, Nelyo, on the ship. And there weren’t any more rangers after Dad took one to go to Valinor and we took all the rest…”

Maitimo’s heart sank as he realised it was true, even as the other line beeped insistently. “Hang on Káno, it’s Curvo on the line…”

“Nelyo. Keep a course for the  _Formenos_ , yeah?”

“Curvo, the damn  _ship’s on fire_ …” he could feel his voice rising, fear stabbing at his stomach. “What - ”

“Granddad’s in there. So are my  _wife and kid_ , for Eru’s sake. So are the Silmarils. I’m going to try and dock.”

He cursed. “Curvo, you’re crazy. You’ll be killed.”

“Not necessarily. The explosion’s taken out the primary engines, but we’ve got the backups, if I can get them online. And the damage is limited to one section, as far as I can see. We can shut it off, then repressurise the remaining sectors. But right now, it’s gonna lose orbit, and crash into the asteroid belt if we just sit up here all nice and safe and do nothing.”

_… Killing everyone aboard, and losing the one power source that might be able to save the Valinor system. Whatever the Void happened to that. And then after that, soon enough these rangers will lose power without the light bathing their solar panels, and then the seven of us will all be locked into so many lumps of space junk._

Maitimo gave a long sigh, flexing his fingers in his heavy flying gloves against the controls. “Alright. Go on.” He paused for a moment. “Maybe…”

“You’re going to say that you should do it” said Curufinwë, his voice impatient, clipped. “Don’t even think about it, Nelyo. I helped Dad fix the old thing a ton of times, I know the sectors that can be shut off better than you do. I know the codes for all the bulkheads.”

Maitimo gritted his teeth. “Fine.”

“You get on the line with our brothers, if you can. Switch on your signal beacon. Takes a lot of power, but do it anyway. If this works, we’ll have power again soon. You won’t run out before reaching the  _Formenos_.” Curufinwë hesitated. “If this  _doesn’t_  work…”

“ _Don’t_ ” said Maitimo, determinedly. “Don’t say it. Dammit, Curvo, just go do it, before I change my mind.”

“Okay. Right. See you on the other side of this, big brother.”

“Yeah. Good luck.”

The com went dead, and Maitimo’s insides twisted once more as he wondered whether he would ever see Curufinwë again.  _Whether he would ever see any of them again…_

His com crackled again as he steered, alarmed at how far the  _Formenos_  had strayed from its orbit already.

“Nelyo!”

It was good to hear his youngest brother’s voice, though there was as much panic in it as he felt. “Telvo. Keep on course for the  _Formenos_. I’ll explain later, don’t have the time now…”

“Nelyo, is that a ranger docking with the ship?”

He swallowed. “Yep. It’s Curvo. He’s going in, gonna try to close down the bulkheads and block off the damaged section.”

“Those inner bulkheads aren’t airlocks, Nelyo. They’re not made to withstand that kind of pressure difference…”

“Well” said Maitimo tersely, “If it’s try our luck with the bulkheads or die out here in the vacuum of space, I don’t know about you but I know what I’m going to choose.”

A moment of silence. “Someone could come by in a search and rescue ship. Manwë’s Eagle fleet used to patrol these orbits, once.”

Maitimo’s laugh was bitter and painful. “Manwë stopped caring about this forsaken little corner of the system when it became exile central. Besides, the whole inner Valinor system is in chaos, I’d guess. They’ll be losing power, and fast.” He swallowed, thinking of his father, down on Ezellohar, closest of the inner planets. What had happened? Why could they no longer see the binary stars, Laurelin and Telperion? He shook his head, putting the problem to the back of his mind. 

A rueful laugh from the com. “Pretty soon this little section of ass-crack of nowhere outside the asteroid belt may be the best powered place in the whole system.”

Maitimo had to suddenly swerve his ranger to avoid a twisted, blackened mass of shielding from the Formenos that was heading towards him at a leisurely pace.  _If we survive this_ , he thought vaguely,  _then I’ll be damned if we get done for filling the system with space junk._ The thought was so absurd it made him want to laugh, or perhaps cry. “Yeah” he said, only half listening. “Listen, Telvo. I’m going to call Káno and Moryo, to make sure they’re okay and don’t do anything stupid. Can you talk to Pityo and Tyelko for me?”

“Sure thing. Bye, Nelyo.”

He was just about to call Macalaurë, when the com crackled once more. “Nelyo?”

 _Curufinwë’s voice_. Maitimo let out a breath he had not realised he had been holding. “Curvo. Are you in there?”

“Yep. Docked on the far side, airlock 6. The inner doors to the burning area are sealed, and I’ll have the backup power running in just a minute. Gotta do a few pressure and seal tests, to see if it’s liveable, but still, I think we have a chance.”

“Good work. Don’t forget to wear your suit in there, until you’re sure of the seal. The alerts will be down.”

Maitimo could practically hear his brother roll his eyes on the other end of the line. “I always wear my suit. Just bring the others in, you’re all wasting power out there. And you can switch off your beacon now.”

“Will do.” He turned off the com with a click, before calling his remaining brothers quickly.

After a surprisingly short time, he was docking his ranger and climbing out, his brothers all appearing around him, faces pale and frightened beneath the glass fronts of their helmets. The gravity was off, as the ship’s spin was too slow now (“I don’t have the reads but I’d guess about 0.4g” said Curufinwë. “Doesn’t matter” said Carnistir. “Little bit of float is fine, as long as we’re alive.” Maitimo felt inclined to agree with him.) Last of all came Tyelkormo, pulling Curufinwë hastily into a rough hug. “Fuck, Curvo, I thought I was the one who did dangerous shit like that on a daily basis.”

“Power’s back up” said Curufinwë, ignoring him. “Macalaurë, send out distress signals. Ezellohar, obviously, but also to Tirion, Alqualondë, Taniquetil… any planet that might answer. Tell them… I don’t know, gas explosion. Blown an airlock. Or something. Make something up, until we know more. The rest of us, let’s split up, look for…” he drew in a deep breath “…anyone.”

Hastily they agreed on who would search each remaining sector of the ship, and before long Maitimo found himself pulling himself by the arms along the passage to the bridge, clinging to the rail to keep his feet on the ground with each step. Adapting one’s movements to such low gravity was a skill that Maitimo had never had much need of. Yet he felt an unexpected pang at the memory of Findekáno, years ago, switching off the gravity in his own sleek little planethopper  _Valour_  purely for the fun of it, and seeing how many zero-g summersaults he could do before he felt sick, laughing helplessly.

Maitimo gritted his teeth and steadied himself in the corridor, grasping at the rail in frustration once more as he felt his feet leave the ground unexpectedly. The corridor was dark, save for the emergency lights that ran in strips along the walls.

The bridge was brighter, lit with the light of the stars outside the window, as well as the blinking red emergency lights on the console. “Yeah, you bet there’s an emergency” whispered Maitimo sympathetically, as though to the ship itself. He patted the console. “Who did this to you?” he wondered aloud, looking around the bridge, his eyes trying to pierce the darkness.

Without the mingled light of Laurelin and Telperion in the distance, and with the main lights down, he could see little beyond his own reach.  _A silmaril would be good to have now,_  he thought ruefully. Instead, there was only his probing hands, reaching out in front of him. He knew this bridge well; he could remember his father sitting him in the captain’s seat when he was just a kid and explaining all the controls to him. Maitimo had learned them diligently, in meticulous detail, yearning for the day when he’d be allowed to try flying the  _Formenos_  himself. The stars had glimmered bright then, the hazy, shimmering glow of dust clouds backlit by the Valinor system rising into view in the distance. 

Those days were over now, though, and now it was dark and there were alarms and red emergency lights, a different place entirely. Suddenly his foot hit something; something soft and heavy lying on the floor beneath the captain’s chair. Maitimo felt a sick sense of dread, but he knelt down, struggling to keep his balance in the lowered gravity with his full suit on, and reached out blindly with his hands.

It was a body, he realised, panic sluicing through him.

He tugged it into the half-light of the stars and the console, squinting at the face. Shapes swam into view, and he saw a shattered glass visor, the face below pasty-pale and swollen where it wasn’t covered in blood. The white front of the suit was all slashed, stained vivid red. Maitimo opened his mouth in a soundless cry of horror.  _Finwë_ , he realised.  _It was granddad_. His eyes were wide and glassy, staring, but Maitimo would know them anywhere.

He did not know how long he sat there, clinging to Finwë’s gloved hand in his own, blood covering both of them. He only noticed time had passed when his brothers hurled themselves in through the door, Curufinwë’s eyes wild, clutching a sobbing Tyelperinquar who was clinging to his father and wearing an oxygen mask.

“ _Nelyo_!”

“Oh, fuck it Nelyo, we were so worried…”

“Where  _were_  you?”

“Nelyo… what’s that…?” Macalaurë fell to his knees beside him and Maitimo looked up in despair.

“He’s dead” said Maitimo simply, his voice cracking like glass. His face hardened, and he rose to his feet, slowly, shakily, feeling the fury building in him. “ _Who did this?”_

“Melkor” said Macalaurë, softly. “I was sending out distress signals, and I… I picked up  _another_  distress signal. From the Valinor system… it said…”

“It said” continued Tyelkormo, in a quiet, stunned whisper, as he stared at the body on the floor, “that it was all Melkor. He took the light. I don’t know _how_ , but…” There was a thick, horrible silence, broken only by Tyelperinquar whimpering quietly in the background.

Maitimo felt a dawning horror. “There’s more, isn’t there…?”

“Yes” said Curufinwë, heavily. “He’s got the Silmarils.”


End file.
